When Asian immigrants, African Americans, or Native people in the U.S. harm animals in their (cultural) practices, controversy is sure to follow. In this talk, Claire Jean Kim discusses her new book, “Dangerous Crossings,” which analyzes three such impassioned disputes: the battle over the live animal markets in San Francisco’s Chinatown, the uproar over the conviction of NFL superstar Michael Vick on dogfighting charges, and the firestorm over the Makah tribe’s decision to resume whaling in the Pacific Northwest after a hiatus of more than seventy years.

Claire Jean Kim is Professor of Political Science and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Irvine, where she teaches classes on comparative race studies, social movements, and human-animal studies.  She is the author of Bitter Fruit:The Politics of Black-Korean Conflict in New York City (Yale University Press 2000) and Dangerous Crossings: Race, Species, and Nature in a Multicultural Age (Cambridge University Press 2015), and she was co-editor of a special issue of American Quarterly entitled “Species/Race/Sex” (2013).